Founder Profile

Pew is an independent nonprofit organization – the sole beneficiary of seven individual trusts established between 1948 and 1979 by four generous and committed siblings. Learn more about one of our founders: Mary Ethel Pew.

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue said that 10 months into the fiscal year it has a shortfall of more than $1 billion. That's more than 4 percent, a bigger margin than in any fiscal year since 2010, and it leaves budget makers with just nine weeks left in the fiscal year to address the unexpectedly large gap.

African-Americans have made significant gains in life expectancy, and the mortality gap between white and black Americans has been cut in half since 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. But blacks in every age group under 65 continue to have significantly higher death rates than whites.

Tentative legislation would raise Colorado’s recreational marijuana special sales tax from 10 percent to the maximum 15 percent rate. The move is generating concern as it raises questions about increasing illegal sales and links core state expenses to a uniquely volatile industry.

Privately owned treatment centers for heroin and prescription painkiller addiction in northwest Georgia draw thousands of patients from Tennessee. But locals are fed up with the onslaught of out-of-towners who pick up their meds and leave, and a new Georgia law essentially prevents any more clinics from opening in the area.

Committees in the Arkansas House and Senate approved bills that would direct the state Department of Human Services to seek a federal waiver, allowing the state to move about 60,000 people off the expanded part of the state’s Medicaid program by limiting eligibility to adults with incomes of up to 100 percent of the poverty level, instead of the current threshold, 138 percent of the poverty level.

The Ohio House approved a nearly $64 billion, two-year operating budget that would impose new controls on Medicaid expansion money and invest $170 million in tackling the state's No. 1 ranking in opioid deaths.

Texas' efforts to enact and enforce the strictest voter ID law in the nation were so plagued by delays, revisions, court interventions and inadequate education that the casting of ballots in the 2016 election was inevitably troubled, a ProPublica investigation has found.

Wisconsin would target heroin and opiate addiction by expanding treatment, hiring special agents and establishing a charter school for addicted teens, under legislation approved unanimously by the state Senate.

The Oregon House sent the Senate a bill that would require the state Department of Consumer and Business Services to adopt specialty building codes for prefabricated and site-built homes that are less than 400 square feet. Supporters say using tiny homes to shelter homeless or low-income people in Oregon could help with the state’s housing shortage.